


cross your heart and take me with you

by drashian



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Chronic Illness, Developing Relationship, Intersex, M/M, Multiple Sclerosis, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Trans Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 10:00:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1343380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drashian/pseuds/drashian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Hermann meets Newton Geiszler, they are pleasant with each other for about 10 minutes until suddenly they're duking it out about Hermann's theories of transdimensional transport.</p><p>The second time Hermann meets Newton Geiszler, they just start yelling.</p><p>The third time Hermann meets Newton Geiszler, it is in the toxic blue haze of the Drift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cross your heart and take me with you

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in a matter of hours because months later and multiple viewings of pacific rim i FINALLY GET WHY EVERYONE LOVES IT. so i needed to just get all my headcanons out (all my headcanons are about newt and hermann because i am their unholy child. for real.)
> 
> so, uh, this is not really my best work but i don't CARE i just want EVERYONE TO KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT THESE SCIENCE BABIES
> 
> WARNING FOR: mentions of self harm, surgery, genital mutilation and medical exhibitionism due to being intersex; vague references to misgendering and medical transition; sex(! i actually wrote sex for once)
> 
> (Title is from [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z50k367WgPs).)

The first time Hermann meets Newton Geiszler, he is short and a little pudgy and his shirt fits him poorly and his hair is longish and wavy and his voice is high and cracking like a 14 year old and he has no visible tattoos. They are pleasant with each other for about 10 minutes until suddenly they're duking it out about Hermann's theories of transdimensional transport. He had _liked_ Dr. Geiszler, respected him, wanted his opinion, except now face-to-face, he can't ignore all the rudeness and informality and it itches under his skin.

The second time Hermann meets Newton Geiszler, he is still short and pudgy and poorly dressed, but his voice stopped cracking so much and his shirt fits a sight better and his hair is short and his tattoos are very, very visible. They aren't pleasant with each other at all, they just start yelling. Everyone is terrified they've made a huge mistake and that K-Science is going to become a battlefield but deep inside, Hermann knows that they're both incredibly glad to see the other.

\- - -

After a year of working together and screaming and insulting and sometimes messing with the others' experiments, Hermann calls a one night truce.

They sit on stools on their respective sides of the lab and stare each other down.

"I made you an indicator," Hermann says, a little embarrassed, and hands a laminated paper to Newt. It has a series of letters on it that Newton immediately recognizes. "So I know what to expect out of you."

Newton grins and nods and circles the H. He tapes it to the side of an empty specimen container, facing Hermann. "Thanks, man. This is actually super useful."

Hermann finds that Newton tends to get creative with his indications but eventually the nuances of a zig-zag line around the H and M, or blacking out every letter except D, or circling everything, become clear to him.

They snipe insults at each other as normal, but sometimes Hermann backs off a little lighter than usual. And when Newton doesn't show up to the lab on the worse depressive episodes, Hermann doesn't go looking for him but emails him that so help him God if Dr. Geiszler is not eating properly he will march right to his door and shove food down his gullet because he is not dealing with losing half of the heads of the science division. They both accept the unspoken knowledge that every month they lose more of their science staff, the pair is becoming a scarcity, and that at some point in the past few years they've started to care.

\- - -

"Newton," Hermann says, wheeling around from the chalkboard, the first name derisive on his tongue. "Please never call me that again." Their lab is now perpetually empty, they are the only two left besides a couple of lab techs who split their time with K-Science and LOCCENT.

"What? Herm?" Newton sticks his tongue out at him. Current mood looks like Newt drew a Kaiju head instead of a circle around H. Lovely.

"Exactly. I know you mean it as a strange shortening of my name, but it has other meanings as well, and I would appreciate it never being used except in the strictest of scientific senses."

Newton looks up, scrunching his eyes, and finds the word in his mental catalog. "Oh! Oh. Right. I totally didn't make that connection."

"Obviously."

Newton gives him a half-salute-half-bow. "Yes sir! Not unless it's the exact biological definition."

Hermann goes back to his formulae but the lines of his shoulder say thanks.

\- - -

The Drift is silence.

They float through memories, together, bleeding, parallel and mingling, flashing by too fast to know anything but their essential truth.

It's hard to remember which set of feet is his--but no, it's always the one with the unsteady hold on gravity. Newton’s is the one wearing the tacky shoes. He susses out the shakier fingers, the skinnier ribs, the sensible hair, passes by the inkstained skin and goes for the pale forearms.

They breathe clear, conscious, escape the Kaiju Blue-tinted pure knowledge, brains overloaded and seizing and in the middle of their panicked revelations about the creatures there's this undercurrent that _they are more similar than they ever thought_.

Newton keeps looking at him, eyes wide and reassuring and curious. Hermann is always there to meet his gaze.

Their memories twist and combine in the blue-tinted memory of the Drift. Hermann untangles them slowly, putting them on either side of a line down the middle of a laboratory. Most of the surgeries go to him, all of the tattoos to Newton. They each get a helping of academia and medication. The social reclusion is harder, the threads tangled together and knotting. Being too smart, too different, too loud (that's definitely Newton's), too sick.

"Newton," Hermann says at what's immediately evident is an inopportune moment but he was zoning out.

"Sup, Hermann?" Newton says and there's no trace of mockery in the first name.

"I think we're Drift Compatible," he says, his hands trembling, God, please stop that right now because he's trying to look serious.

Newton grins. "Of course we are. I've known that for, like, nine? Ten? Years."

Hermann's not sure where that confidence comes from but he also does, sees all of Newton's memories, dumps the box labelled "Feelings about Hermann Gottlieb" on the floor of his mind and spreads it out and sorts through it and finds--oh. Yes.

"Yes, I think I did, too," he says, and a grin breaks out on his face, too.

\- - -

After the Drift, Hermann throws away the episode indicator.

"It's irrelevant now," he says. "I just know."

\- - -

It takes a full week after the Drift for Newton to give up and try to ask Hermann on a date because obviously he's been into this for ten years or so and he has actual confirmation Hermann feels the same way. They kind of stare at each other awkwardly until Hermann begins to laugh.

"Of course, you unprofessional, indecisive, oblivious moron." Then he goes right back to his work (currently, refining data tables for what is going to be the most important publication of his life).

They go off premises to eat, finding a restaurant that's not destroyed and has a menu partially in English because both of their Cantonese is clumsy. It's weird and awkward and at the same time totally thrilling and perfect. Like everything is between them, really.

"That was the weirdest date ever," Newton says, his fingers playing with the wrinkled edge of Hermann's collar.

"I quite agree. Not to say it wasn't pleasant." Hermann is smiling broadly and Newton takes that opportunity to kiss him. It's short and closed mouth and their noses bump a little more than they probably should.

Hermann bids him a stiff good night and disappears into his room.

They go on a few more dates before Newton finally follows Hermann into his room after, kissing him sloppily as they both fall onto the bed. "I don't know why everyone doesn't drift with their sexual partners," Newt says as he strips the sweater and button down off of Hermann's skinny torso. "It makes everything so fucking easy. I don't have to _tell_ you all the stuff I have to tell everyone else. I love it." Hermann agrees, if the hands under his shirt touching him just so are any indication.

The bed is too small for coitus, truly, but it's only in the post that they notice. So they cuddle half on top of each other, both still sweaty and wet and sticky. Hermann's legs are locked tightly around Newton's, his fingers tracing along tattoos and scars on Newton's chest and arms and legs.

"Otachi," Hermann whispers, pointing at the freshest one across Newton's hip and descending to his thigh.

"Of course. Her baby will be right here," he points at the hollow under his hipbone, "and the others are coming soon. Haven't had a lot of free time."

Hermann tsks. "I still think they're irrational and inappropriate."

He kisses Yamarashi's crest.

\- - -

The edges of a Ghost Drift catch them right as they're interlocking, Hermann sliding into Newton, and they both get hit with the blunt edge of an unpleasant memory and ten seconds later they're clutching head and leg and laughing darkly.

"Can we ever have sex undisturbed?" Newton says, rubbing his temples. Hermann is inclined to agree. Between medical emergencies, flashbacks, urgent emails, telephone calls, knocks on the door, sudden flare ups, and Newton's hyperactive attention span, they practically never finish what they start.

Hermann wants to apologize for the sudden memory because usually he just pushes them away, deals with it later, but apparently the Drift has other ideas. It is the third member of their relationship, the ever-present factor.

Instead, Newton wraps his arms loosely around Hermann's waist and kisses his collarbone. "Hey, it's okay. We're both in the upper decile of people with body issues. I get it." Hermann nods and breathes slowly until his muscles stop cramping and his mind clears of the memory of prepubescent and voyeuristic examinations.

"Try again?" Newton says, and Hermann nods, pushing him to his back and kissing and licking down his tattooed chest and stomach and tasting between his legs until nothing else, nothing but the tang and musk and hands twisting in his short hair.

\- - -

"This is the best," Newton says without lifting his head. Hermann groans. "The worst, but also the best. Because at least we're not alone."

If the indicator had still been around, Hermann guesses that it would be a big dark black scribble around the D. He doesn't say anything out loud though because his left leg has decided to engage in some particularly painful spasming and he's just trying to get past it.

They're both naked under their shared covers and he tells Newton that the freezing air is not helping through grit teeth and waits for Newton to get up and hand him a sweater (his) and sweatpants (not his) from the floor. Their apartment is a mess and there's an itch in his brain that makes him want to clean but he'll be damned if he actually does it. At least not today.

"At least one of us can stand," he says bitterly, trying to wrestle into pants without moving too much.

Newton gives a weird defeated sigh and picks up his tablet, lying back in bed. He managed to get into a hoodie and a pair of Hermann's pajama pants. "I'm ordering delivery," he says, and stares at Google blankly until Hermann sighs and takes it away from him.

"Let me do it." Newton gives a thankful noise and burrows his head into Hermann's neck. As long as he stays laying back and doesn't twist too much, there's really just some aching cramping going on in his lower extremities. He ignores the tremble running through his fingers as benign even though nothing, _nothing_ on his body ever really is.

They fall asleep and Hermann has to push Newton right out of the bed so he can get their Chinese food and they eat and fall asleep again. It is, indeed, the worst, but also the best.

\- - -

The third time Hermann meets Newton Geiszler, it is in the toxic blue haze of the Drift, silent, vibrating and twisting and bleeding and confused sorting through whose needle, whose father, whose scalpel, whose classmates, whose doctorate, whose bedframe. Newton's hair is long, wavy, shorter, buzzed off, growing. His voice is high, cracking, staccato. Tattoos bloom across his arms and chest and down his stomach and legs. Hermann rides the gurney with him; knows Newton is riding his, too. Knows Newton is inhabiting that body, too skinny and developing wrong, twisting, shaking, cramping and finally too painful to move. Just as he inhabits a rounder body, morphing and stinging and modified beyond its original state.

Newton sheds the body and skin he was given; Hermann curls inside of his broken one and makes it a home.

The third time Hermann meets Newton Geiszler, he lays out the pieces of their mind, organizes them across the floor, and locks them together until finally, he stands to see they've fit together perfectly.

**Author's Note:**

> intersex hermann is everything to me though (moonwalks away)
> 
> anyone else noticed i am a complete inconsistent mess about capitalization on ao3?
> 
> (for clarification because people always ask: hermann is dmab, intersex, and has ms; newt is a dfab trans man and bipolar)
> 
> (3/21: fixed like 500 typos and made some narrative edits, mostly changing "Newt" to "Newton" when from Hermann's perspective)


End file.
